Noisecast Roundup 5-6-2011: Creepy Cute Kittens

Kittens, for all their cute qualities, sometimes freak me the hell out. Many summers ago I was living at my grandparents’ house and we had this mama cat and her kittens using our human abode as their own. The sunshine from the window warmly woke my hungover self but I did my usual routine of laying in bed and loathing my decisions from last night. A soft scratching noise caused me to open my eyes and lo and behold one of the young kittens had made it onto the wooden bedpost. It sat there motionless, giving me the stare of death, waiting to see if I was going to make a move. I closed my eyes again and immediately I felt something small land on the sheets. I opened my eyes again and there was the kitten again, this time on the bed sheets, about a foot closer to me, staring with its wide open eyes with a statuesque pose betraying no movement. I smiled to myself. Cute kitty wants to play peekaboo! I closed my eyes again and heard the sheets rustle again, feeling the weight of something approaching me. I opened my eyes again, finding the kitten in the same exact pose, looking at me with the same intense gaze, this time about arms-length away from my face. Awwwwww! I closed my eyes again and felt the kitty take a few more steps. My eyes shot open and there it was, now inches away from my face, staring at my groggy sleep-ridden face. I smiled again and opened my mouth slowly to whisper good morning and suddenly…thwack thwack thwack thwack! Fucking kitten smacked my face four times with its paws really quickly, jumped off the bed, and ran out of the room.

Time for today’s roundup, above story unrelated.

• Sony CEO Howard Stringer sends out an apology letter
  Well that’s thoughtful. It’s so nice to know that Mr. Stringer cares! Joking aside, despite Sony’s blunder and amount of time it took to let people know what was going on, they really are trying to make reparations for the damage. A $1 million identity theft insurance policy per user and free PlayStation Plus subscriptions is a nice touch. Sony’s definitely going to be losing a few billion dollars for this whole ordeal. And although apologies are nice and a “welcome back” package is thoughtful, I would have preferred that measures had been taken to prevent such a breach from happening in the first place. Yet another lesson in monetary amount required to fix damage exponentially surpasses the monetary amount required to prevent a disaster.
• Another attack on Sony planned for this weekend
  There’s two kinds of smart, book smart and street smart. These hackers are obviously book smart. Can’t say I see much street smarts in them. This time they’re saying that they will publicize whatever personal information they acquire. Yup, cause that’ll teach Sony a good lesson! Clearly Sony is going the be the big loser from this operation, not the commonfolk.
• The $25 USB stick computer
  I’m always pro-innovation, especially when it benefits the less fortunate. In this case, this tiny PC is aimed towards providing a cheap computer alternative for children in third-world countries whose parents have no way of affording even the most cheapest of computers. Of course, monitor, keyboard, and mouse are not included. I guess this is step 2 of this process would be to make a ridiculously cheap LCD screen that this contraption could be embedded inside of (a-la all-in-one PC style). 
• T-Mobile loses record number of subscribers in Q1 2011
  Sorry AT&T, if T-Mobile customers think your buyout plans are a bad idea then bet your ass that the government will think the same. 
• Oracle has a sad, Google has a happy
  A judge promptly told Oracle to STFU in court, reducing its patent infringement claims against Google from 132 to 3. So Android is safe from Oracle’s claims that it infringes everything Java, which it owns. Oracle was unhappy with this decision so it decided to subpoena the open source Apache Foundation for the same reasons. Cool story, Oracle.
• Apple is ditching Intel for ARM?
  Yes, because Apple wants to completely rewrite OS X and all of its software properties again to now support ARM architecture. Cool story, MacRumors.
• Mac’s don’t get viruses! They get malware
  Ignore the fact that this guy writes a Microsoft-biased blog for a second. It should come as no surprise that we are going to start seeing increased activity of naughty Mac code invading our systems. Mac’s have “never gotten viruses” because the people who create viruses want to affect as many people as possible. Macs have never really been widespread around the world, compared to Windows. In the last few years though, things have changed because it’s now super-cool to own a Mac. With an increase in the number of people of buying Macs it is only logical that Macs increasingly become a target for viruses and malware.

Well, with that I leave you with this kitten commercial to wrap up the roundup. It’s from the Animal Humane Society and the kittens are very cute. Except when they talk. I dunno about you, but the talking kittens in this video are just plain creepy.